Religious Exemptions Are Under Assault in Connecticut!

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The Connecticut Legislature is considering a bill, H.B. 7005, which would remove nurses and add clergy as persons who can acknowledge parental statements concerning religious exemptions to vaccination.

This bill would repeal the current law concerning vaccines and exemptions, Section 10-204a, and replace it.

The American Academy of Pediatrics in Connecticut made the following statement in their testimony on this bill:

“The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that state laws permitting nonmedical exemptions should be completely eliminated.  This piece of legislation will simply remove school nurses from the list of people who can acknowledge that such immunization would be contrary to the religious beliefs of such child or the parents or guardian of such child.  We believe you should not stop at school nurses, but should eliminate this non-medical exemption totally.”  Read their statement here.

Allowing this bill to move forward is dangerous because it would be easy to amend the bill to eliminate religious exemptions altogether.

There will be a public hearing in the Joint Committee on Children TOMORROW.  If you would like to attend, you need to show up by 11:00 a.m.  Pull a number and you will be given an opportunity to speak on the HB 7005, which is on the agenda for the day.

Location: Committee on Children

State Capitol Building, Room 011

Hartford, CT 06106

https://www.cga.ct.gov/kid/

If you cannot attend in person, you may provide written testimony at: kidtestimony@cga.ct.gov

TAKE ADDITONAL ACTION:

Contact your Connecticut State legislators and ask them to OPPPOSE H.B. 7005.  You can find out who represents you at: https://www.cga.ct.gov/asp/menu/cgafindleg.asp

Calls are more effective than emails, and only take a few minutes.

Sample script:

“Hi, my name is ____ and I am a constituent.  I am calling to ask Representative   ____ to OPPOSE H.B. 7005.

I oppose any legislation that would restrict a parent’s right to religious vaccine exemptions.

H.B. 7005 eliminates nurses as persons who may acknowledge religious objections to vaccination.  The nurse/patient relationship must be kept intact.

It is a slippery slope when legislators modify religious vaccine exemptions.  This bill could easily be modified to eliminate religious exemptions altogether.

There is no need to make it harder for people to assert religious exemptions to vaccination.  The Connecticut vaccination rate is currently at 95.6%.  The current law is working.

I urge Representative _______ to oppose this bill.

Be sure to explain why this issue is important to you. You may wish to use a couple of the talking points below. Don’t copy all of them – just use them as ideas to help structure your own message.

TALKING POINTS for calls and emails:

• This legislation discriminates against families with sincere religious beliefs opposing the administration of one or more vaccines to their children. Nurses should not be removed as the people one can trust to confide in about religious beliefs and vaccination.
• The Connecticut vaccination rate is currently above 96% for the 7 vaccines surveyed by the CDC. The existing religious exemption has not decreased rates and must be left intact. Religious and medical exemptions combined are at only 2.1%, which is on target to the national median of 1.8%.

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/66/wr/mm6640a3.htm

• The idea that unvaccinated individuals pose a health risk to others is unsupported in the medical literature. In fact, vaccinated individuals can pose greater risk to public health due to a process known as shedding. Scientific evidence demonstrates that individuals vaccinated with live virus vaccines such as MMR (measles, mumps and rubella), rotavirus, chicken pox, shingles and influenza can shed the virus for many weeks or months afterwards and infect the vaccinated and unvaccinated alike. https://www.westonaprice.org/studies-show-that-vaccinated-individuals-spread-disease/
• The US Supreme Court recognizes vaccines to be “unavoidably unsafe” and to cause injury and death in some recipients. The US Government has paid out more that $3 billion to the victims of vaccine injury. Hundreds of thousands have reported an adverse reaction to vaccination to VAERS. http://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/ensuringsafety/monitoring/vaers/
• Vaccine package inserts warn of the risk of brain damage, life-threatening allergy, and death and no one knows in advance whom a vaccine will harm.
• Vaccine makers and the healthcare providers who administer them bear zero liability for vaccine injuries and deaths. The vaccine manufactures reap all the profits from vaccines, without having to pay for any of the injuries or harm.

MORE INFORMATION

View HB 7005 here: https://www.cga.ct.gov/asp/cgabillstatus/cgabillstatus.asp?selBillType=Bill&which_year=2019&bill_num=HB7005

If you want to learn more about other vaccine bills being considered in Connecticut visit: The National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) https://nvicadvocacy.org/members/Home.aspx

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